I have finally managed my first BIAB after what seems like months of gathering together the bits and pieces I needed.
I settled on Programmers Elbow from the BCS book. Everything went reasonably well, no major dramas, at least until it came time to transfer the wort from the kettle to the fermenter. I had about 28 litres of cooled wort in my kettle.
I attempted a "whirlpool" with the intention of draining the wort into the fermenter through the tap at the bottom of my kettle. Anyway, after swirling the wort round for a while, I let it settle for about 15 minutes. Looking into the kettle at this point I didn't see a nice wee cone of trub in the bottom as I was hoping for, instead the trub completely covered the bottom, although it was higher in the centre. I decided against using the tap and instead siphoned the wort into the fermenter. Went great for 18 litres then I reached the trub and stopped siphoning.
This is where things went a wee bit wrong. I topped the fermenter up with 5 litres of water to reach my target of 23 litres. Kicked myself afterwards as I know I should have just gone with the 18 litres.
The initial target strength of the recipe was 5.4%. I know by adding the 5 litres of water to the fermenter I will have diluted it and changed the outcome, perhaps by a fair bit. Hopefully it will still be nice and drinkable.
What I would like some opinions on is the amount of trub.
Is 10 litres of trub out of 28 litres normal?
Should I have continued siphoning the trub into the fermenter until I reached the 23 litre mark instead of stopping as soon as I reached the trub?
I added about 3/4 of a protafloc tablet 15 minutes before the end of the boil. Instructions say 1 tablet per 5 gallons of wort but I have read it is better to go with half a tablet per 5 gallons - would this make a big difference?
Anyway, overall I am happy with the outcome of my first batch and just itching to get stuck into the next
Thanks for any opinions on the trub
